Goddess Centered Practice
In the woods behind my house rest a collection of nine large flat rocks. Daily, I walk down to these “priestess rocks” for some sacred time alone to pray, meditate, consider, and be. Often, while in this space, I open my mouth and poetry comes out. I’ve come to see this experience as "theapoetics"—experiencing the Goddess through direct “revelation,” framed in language. As Stanley Hopper originally described in the 1970’s, it is possible to “…replace theology, the rationalistic interpretation of belief, with theopoetics, finding God[dess] through poetry and fiction, which neither wither before modern science nor conflict with the complexity of what we know now to be the self.” Theapoetics might also be described, “as a means of engaging language and perception in such a way that one enters into a radical relation with the divine, the other, and the creation in which all occurs.”
Poem: Beltane Moon
I didn’t just stop
to smell the lilacs
I sang to them too
praising their beauty 
as I pressed my nose
into their blooms.
The air was full
of enchantment
as I delighted in the sunlight
filtered through new maple leaves
and scattered across stone.
I rolled redbud flowers
across my tongue
and ate dandelions straight
from the stem
feeling yellow petals
in my teeth.
I savored the flavor of a violet
and rubbed mint leaves
between my fingers
I crawled on my knees
through the clover
watched bees dance
on the dandelions
and found ginger
and elderberry beneath
my heels as I stretched
my arms into a tree branch
reaching for tender buds.
I gathered the blossoms
of springtime
kissed them with gratitude
and offered them into
the bubbles of water
from which rivers are born.
I let my fingers trail
through the wildness
within me and around me.
Then I lifted my lips
to my lover
under the
Beltane moon.
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